Storage operations scheduled by different processes or different groups of processes running on a system may have different relative priorities. Thus, the Linux kernel implements a CFQ storage scheduler, which allows storage commands issued to a disk to be scheduled so as to prioritize storage commands coming from higher priority processes and groups of processes. This scheme uses blkio shares assigned to particular groups of processes in association with particular disks as well as ionice values assigned to particular processes to prioritize storage commands received by the CFQ storage scheduler for each disk.